Mongolian Chinese Restaurant

If you’re reading this review in the hopes of finding out about authentic Mongolian cuisine, picturing platefuls of salty yak cheese or lamb skewers infused with the unmistakeable flavour of grassland campfires, don’t bother reading on. You’ve been grossly misled by the headline. Mongolian Chinese Restaurant serves up the most generic of internationalised grub inspired by the Far East, with a few Singaporean and Korean dishes thrown in for good measure. Having said that, if you are a fan of bog-standard Chinese takeaways, then this eatery isn’t bad.

The venue is small and cozy with a great family atmosphere; on our visit almost all of the six tables were full of large, noisy groups seemingly having a great time. The decor was cheery Chinese kitsch with pretend cottage bricks on the walls, chequered table cloths, and tasselled wall hangings. The quick and friendly Filipino waitresses were even sporting shiny bright red silk Chinese tops.

Our party picked a selection of dishes to share in traditional Middle Kingdom dining style. The kimchi turned up first, but was so heavily spiced you’d need a tongue of steel to even consider a second bite. So we soothed ourselves with surprisingly bland prawn crackers instead. Our Shanghainese prawn spring rolls with sweet chilli sauce were terrific, served piping hot and tasting like they might have been refried a few times to give them an extra-crunchy wrapper and an oil-soaked filling.

The main dishes were hit and miss. Garlic broccoli is such a simple dish it’s hard to imagine how you might get it so wrong, but ours arrived soaked in a bizarre variation of sweet and sour sauce. As you can imagine, it was like an all-out attack on the tastebuds.

So we ordered Mongolian special chicken, just to see if the dish deserved the adjective. It didn’t. The meat itself was chunky, good quality and well-cooked, but the sauce was gloopy and overpowering, tasting of little but soy sauce. We had the same problem with the sizzling mixed seafood hot plate, which had a generous amount of seafood and crunchy chunks of green and red pepper, but the sauce tasted almost identical to that of the chicken.

Even allowing for the fact that Chinese food is generally oily, all the dishes we were served had enough grease to give everyone that bloated, over-stuffed feeling on the way home, in spite of the fact we’d only eaten modest portions. This isn’t a place to hit up regularly if you care about your health, but if you want a cheap and cheerful treat it’s a fun place to eat out with a big group.

User reviews:

I like that it is cheap food, served fast, waitress is extremely nice and funny.
I agree, it is not the best Asian food ever, but it goes down well and it is cheap

Posted by: June on 04 Jun ' 11 at 17:22

OverallDecorService

FoodAmbienceValue

Best for: Family friendly

Would you go back to this restaurant? Yes

It’s across from Abu Dhabi Mall. I’ve eaten here a couple of times. The food is decent but nothing impressive. The peking duck was a bit weird (not the usual duck skin that I expected--it's a plate of meat instead) but the stir fry vegetables and the sizzling dish were both pretty good. It’s certainly better than food court Chinese food and the price is reasonable.